In The Waiting Room - Elizabeth Bishop

In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic 
(I could read) and carefully 
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson 
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
--"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice--
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
even then I knew she was 
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't.  What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.

I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities--
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts--
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How--I didn't know any
word for it--how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?

The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.

Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth 
of February, 1918.

commentary 

The speaker starts simple, setting the scene and telling us where she is. She's at the dentist's office with her aunt, in Worcester, Massachusetts, a small city west of Boston.
The poem starts with a wide lens. The speaker talks about where she is in the country. Then she zooms in to her location in the dentist's waiting room. She seems a bit on the young side because of the way she talks about "Aunt Consuelo." The speaker talks about the "grown-up people" who are with her in the waiting room, so it's clear now that she's young. Grown-ups don't usually call other adults "grown-ups." Everyone is dressed in their heavy New England winter gear, and the office is filled with regular dentist's office stuff – lamps, magazines. We find out that the speaker is a little bored and a little restless. Our speaker seems pretty proud of the fact that she can read: she announces this in her parenthetical remark. This makes us think that she's actually very young.
Our speaker catalogs the photographs that she "studies" in the National Geographic.
The first photograph is of a volcano that's filled with ashes. Her description of the volcano "spilling over," which is in the present tense, makes it sound like it's happening in her real life, and not just in the magazine. It's like the photo has come alive. 
The next photograph is of Osa and Martin Johnson, a famous husband and wife explorer team who traveled all over the world in the early 20th century. They were known for documenting the people and wildlife of the Eastern hemisphere, and sharing what they learned with the Western world through magazines, photographs, and documentary films.
The third photograph is even creepier than the first. There's a dead man on a pole, and the caption refers to him as a "pig." Our speaker keeps cataloguing what she sees, and she's overwhelmed by the photos of people who seem strange to her: the babies with pointed heads, the naked women with wires around their necks. The women of certain African and Asian cultures wear neck coils in order to elongate their necks; that's probably who the women in the pictures are.
The speaker repeats the rhyming phrase "wound round and round," as if to express her shock at what she sees.
In an attempt to understand these women, our speaker uses a simile, and compares the wire rings to something that she finds familiar: the light bulb.
But she's still overwhelmed. She is horrified by the photos of the naked women. 
Even though she's afraid, the speaker can't put the magazine down. For her, it's like looking at a train wreck: it's horrible, but she can't stop looking.
Finally, she stops looking at the photographs, and checks out the cover of the magazine. She notices the date and the magazine's yellow margins. It seems like she's trying to convince herself that everything she's seen exists only in the magazine, and that it's not real. It's like she's trying to contain her confused feelings within the magazine's covers.Suddenly, she hears a cry of pain from her aunt in the dentist's office, and says that she realizes that "it was me" – that the cry was coming from her aunt, but also from herself. She imagines that she and her aunt are the same person, and that they are falling.In an attempt to calm down, Elizabeth says to herself that she is just about to turn seven years old. She compares herself to the adults in the waiting room, and wonders if she is one of "them." She seems to realize that she is, and looking around, says that "nothing / stranger could ever happen." Elizabeth then questions her basic humanity, and asks about the similarities between herself and others. What are the similarities between herself and her aunt? Between herself and the naked women in the magazine? How did she get where she is? What kind of connections does she have with the rest of the world? Elizabeth is overwhelmed. The waiting room is bright and hot, and she feels like she's sliding beneath a black wave.Finally, she snaps out of it. She remembers that World War I is still going on, that she's still in Massachusetts, and that it's still a cold and slushy night in February, 1918.